Odd Hearings Ahead On Webb Space Telescope Problems (Update)
NASA’s next great space telescope is stuck on Earth after screwy errors, Washington Post
“Mission success is the cornerstone of everything we do. Getting it right is the most important thing,” said Scott Willoughby, program manager for the Webb at Northrop Grumman. “No, we don’t need a culture change. We need people to understand how hard it is. We need people to know that we’re going to get it right.”
Keith’s note: Given the immense cost overruns and delays with Webb, this has to be the most clueless, tone deaf comment I have ever heard from an aerospace company. “No, we don’t need a culture change.” Seriously? This week there will be an unusual pair of hearings – same committee, same topic, but a different witness lineup. Have a look:
Panel 1 – Wednesday July 25, 2018 at 10:00 a.m.
Hon. Jim Bridenstine, administrator, NASA
Mr. Tom Young, chairman, JWST Independent Review Board
Prepared statements: Thomas Young; Jim Bridenstine; Rep. Babin; Rep. Smith;
Rep. Johnson; Rep. Bera
Panel 2 – Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 9:00 9:30 a.m.
Mr. Wesley Bush, chief executive officer, Northrop Grumman Corp.
Mr. Tom Young, chairman, JWST Independent Review Board
Watch live
Hearing charter
“Since the JWST program has now breached under 51 USC 30104 notification conditions, the hearing discussion on July 25 will explore NASA program management effectiveness, program continuation and reauthorization, and budgetary implications across NASA’s entire science portfolio, to include the WFIRST program. The second part on July 26 will explore contractor issues and recommended improvements regarding contractor accountability.”
OK, so this is strange. Webb Space Telescope is more than a decade late and has busted its budget cap yet again – this time by $800 million – so much so that Congress is required, by law, to reauthorize the entire project. Oddly, the NASA Administrator (who pays for this project) and the CEO of Northrop Grumman (who gets paid for this project) are not testifying together – not even on the same day. But the JWST IRB chair will testify with both Bridenstine and Bush. Its almost as if NASA wants to get their viewpoint and that of the Webb IRB first and then Northrop Grumman has 24 hours to get their act together – except – Congress usually wants prepared testimony submitted a day or more in advance. Or maybe there is a lot of looming tension and Congress does not want a cage match between NASA and Northrop Grumman. Stay tuned.
Keith’s update: Looks like NASA has some pre-recorded spin that they will air on NASA TV after the first hearing on Wednesday:
“NASA Television will air a conversation about the progress and promise of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with Nobel Prize winner John Mather at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, July 25. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen will join Mather, senior project scientist for the Webb Telescope, to talk about the challenges of building the world’s premier space telescope and why it’s all worth it.”
– Northrop Grumman’s Webb Space Telescope Charm Offensive, earlier post
– Clueless Webb Telescope Advertisement From Northrop Grumman, earlier post
– More Cost Increases And Delays For Webb Space Telescope, earlier post
– Pieces Are Falling Off Of James Webb Space Telescope, earlier post
– Where Oh Where Did All Of That Webb Money Go?, earlier post
Given the charm offensive that Northrop-Grumman has been putting I expect this won’t be just a routine reapproval of a project with spending that is way out of control. Instead they might use it as a “teaching moment” about the need to develop better budget estimates and learning to include a cushion to allow for the problems that always seem to occur with these flagship projects at NASA.
But in the end, it’s rare that Congress cancels a major project, since the original award was made by ….Congess.
Unfortunately you’re probably right. As part of an intelligence community technical meetings, as well as my expertise in adaptive optics space systems, i was shocked at how old, obsolete, low enthusiasm, very political, in fighting, arrogant untouchable attitude, and inept managers, lack of can do attitude etc at the optics facilities within Northrup Grumman (as well as other facilities in the various aerospace companies). Based on prior satellite tiger teams I’ve been on, rarely does a program over budget/schedule to this degree ever produce in the end no matter how much money is thrown at it. It’s painful and embarrassing to cut a program when so much has been invested- so I double they’ll cut it. I hope if the do fund JWTS it is successful but I doubt throwing more money at it will solve their problems enough to launch by 2022-2024 and beyond timeframe.
If that is the case the project should be cancelled, but that does not seem likely. The Ariane may be retired by then so there may be more expense to switch to the FH, though the launch itself might be a little cheaper.
True, but the SCSC should not be forgotten.
Better budget estimates aren’t likely, as long as the new mission is doing a large number of complicated and previously untried things. And, I hate to say it, but JWST would never have gotten approved if the initial budget hadn’t had sizable budget reserves. They blew through those reserves a long time ago.
For smaller missions like the Discovery or New Frontiers lines, I think 30% reserves at all mission phases is mandatory. Of course, they are cost-caped missions and subject to cancelation, or at least the threat of it, if they get too far off track in budget or schedule.
Making the reserves larger isn’t a great solution. If you asked WFIRST to carry a 100% reserve, it just wouldn’t fit in the budget and it would get canceled. And, if not, they would use up the reserves (this is an approved management practice in the field) and the next, similar mission’s estimated cost would that, with another 100% tacked on. The current 30% per mission inflation is bad enough.
The most severe punishment is reserved for those who try naively to save money and and up “Leaving money on the table”. I learned that bitter lesson. Logically the PI could get a no cost extension and use the money during the following year, but Nooooooo.
OTOH if you have vast overruns in time and cost but can sell the project as too big to fail and so worthy of additional funding because of the sunk cost fallicy, you actually (as seen with NG in this case) get a higher profit.
Why do we have cost overruns? Because cost is profit, and profit is our goal.
To be fair (and I’ve asked for a few and gotten burned as often as not), no cost extensions are an accounting mess. Ultimately, Congress does not give NASA no cost extensions. So if one project needs one, someone has to do work ahead of schedule and shift money forward from next year’s planned budget.
But I do agree about the spend-to-zero issue; you see an amazing amount of spending on weird things at the end of each performance period. Somehow, that last month is when people realize the project really needs more storage space on the server, or they really need to order that expensive component, even though the schedule says they could wait another six months.
(On the other hand, people can get amazingly clever about accounting games. I got paid one day early this month, because someone wanted move a month of state employee salaries from one state fiscal year to another…)
I wonder what Congress will do here. I am guessing they will agree to the funding increase for Webb,,,but make NASA eat it out of their budget. Which will lead to cannibalism within the halls of NASA HQ, as Mission Directorates and Divisions posture to protect their budgets from being whacked.
Or maybe Congress will approve an upper to the NASA budget?
That’s what I’m also afraid of. 800 million across three fiscal years only to get Webb to the launch pad (barring any additional major problems cropping up) would almost certainly delay WFIRST and other astrophysics missions unless other Directorates will pay for it. One can hope Congress will cough up the extra money, but otherwise the whole astrophysics division will suffer yet again at the hands of the ‘telescope that ate astronomy’.
Maybe Congress will deferred WFIRST and use it’s projected funding for make up for the additional JWST funding requirements. Plus killing off future small astrophysics missions.
Other NASA Directorates will not be interested in losing funding to another Directorate. And the associated Congressional critters will not allow a reduction in funding to the Directorates in their districts.
Absolutely, especially since Mikulski isn’t around anymore to force the Senate into ponying up more money for Goddard’s projects. The problem is that these low-cost astrophysics missions often accomplish a lot more science per dollar than the flagship missions. I doubt Webb will ever beat Kepler in that regard. Meanwhile, due to their lower risk and lower price tag, small missions can be launched more often, follow up on earlier missions and be highly specialized while eschewing the complexity of systems like Hubble and Webb.
We’ve seen this before with the MSL/Curiosity 26-month launch slip, and, to a lesser extent, the InSight lander’s similar slip. Congress didn’t cough up the money, the total wasn’t quite $800 million, but it was within a factor of two. Most of the damage was limited to the Mars program, but planetary as a whole suffered some.
True, but the extra cost of getting Webb flight ready is more than in the case of Curiosity. Also, that 800 million represents a greater share of the Astrophysics budget of three consecutive fiscal years than the extra Curiosity cost did for Planetary science. Astrophysics can basically launch only one Medium or large mission every decade, while Planetary Science can manage to get one Flagship mission and one New Horizons mission to the pad every decade.
I can’t find the number, but the Curiosity delay (which was only part of the cost overruns) was something like $500 million. My point of reference is working on the Cassini extended mission proposal at the time the delay was announced. A friend and I realized that the delay was more than our whole (seven year, solstice phase) extended mission. Although it also worked out to about eight hours of US spending on our involvement in Iraq, at the then current rate.
The InSight delay cost about $150 million, although I don’t know if that’s with or without the cost of fixing the seismometer. The two together are pretty close to the latest, $800 million JWST overrun.
Yes, planetary does have a larger budget than astrophysics. But they do manage more than one medium Explorer per decade. My point was that there is no need to speculate. We’ve seen what cost overruns of this magnitude mean; there is no maybe about the impact they have on other missions. It’s going to hurt and deciding how to spread the pain isn’t going to be pleasant.
I suspect a lot of the public fight in April over money for WFIRST was precisely to sequester off funds for a definable astrophysics project due to the looming budget bust of JWST.
Personally, I want the whole amount–or at least a big enough fraction to get people’s attention–to come out of the hide of astrophysics. Zero out WFIRST and whatever else it takes.
It would hurt more if they gave the astrophysical community a choice. Don’t zero out WFIRST to cover the JWST cost overruns. Flat out tell the appropriate advisory committee that the money is coming out of astrophysics, and it’s either going to be WFIRST or every single other thing NASA funds (research and analysis grants, ground based telescopes, Explorer missions, etc). Then let them decide. Axing WFIRST might not be the best choice. Regardless, if they did that, the community would treat it as an isolated issue and the complaints would be focused on that one issue. If it’s stated as a question, where to cut somewhere to salvage their highest priority, then it sort of forces people to consider the big picture.
They are probably prepping for the next delay.
That probably explain why the new proposed launch date is suddenly 2021 and even later instead of year by year delays. They probably will have a heavily padded budget like they bragged about having in 2011 (link in above posting) so they have a 5 year cash cow to milk. Perhaps if they sense this is the final delay they can actually get away with they will actually complete JWST. We’ll still probably get some 1 or two year delays at the end just to squeeze the last drop of optimizing what NASA and congress are willing to pay since they’ve already invested so long and so much.
The Small Business Innovative Research companies have discovered this profitable game out too. Its very profitable to not deliver on phase II so that they get additional phase II funded efforts. It’s very profitable to drag thing out if it’s something the NASA programs really want or too embarrassed to cancel. I know of one NASA phase II that was funded 3 or 4 additional times (the contractual & legal wrangling to do and hide this is interesting too).
I actually even had one instance on one SBIR effort for the Air Force I was managing where the small company engineers and chief scientist came to me and told me their small company President/CEO was taking most of the money on a phase II and purposely spending it on his pet project interests (which he couldnt get funded by anyone). This small company had good contentious engineers who were as excited as I was about the effort and knew I wouldn’t advocate a second phase II for the same work. . Suffice it to say this situation was properly handled involving USAF contracts and legal. I had a similar SBIR encounter at NASA. Interestingly, legal sided with me on stopping the under the table redirection of funds (for legal reasons not to engage in FWA) but contracts and management wanted me to sign off on the monthly reports and payment of work not actually performed. I went thru quite a bit of retaliation by the group pressuring to sign off
Until NASA and Congress really demands their money’s worth of good faith effort, the taxpayers will be milked for everything they’re willing to get away with. NASA management often sides with companies and retaliates against civil servant engineers who try to get a good faith performance on government contracts. One of these nasa retaliating manages later became a vp at an aerospace company.
What is amazing is that they are probably using the profits from JWST costs to run these propaganda ads.
Yep. If JWTS were really just a year or so from being ready there wouldn’t need to be all these propaganda ads. I don’t sense the electric excitement you typically see when a program is really nearly ready asking for additional funds. Hence we really don’t know how what JWST really needs to complete.
The charm offensive aspect of the propaganda is similar to a con job- all the money going into someone’s pocket except the scientists, engineers and technicians who make it really happen.
I am reminded of an old joke, which is also an example of chutzpah. It’s about a man on trial for murdering his parents. He asks the court to be lenient because he is an orphan.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just park the WST at Earth-Moon L4 or L5, to open it up and check it out for a couple of years (and then figure out how to fix it if there are problems), before towing it out to Sun-Earth L2 with a solar-electric tug, for final operation. Besides, the plan to trash it after only 10 years at S-E L2 is just nuts IMHO, after sinking $8G; maybe that would open up ways to make it more permanent ?
I’m afraid JWST wouldn’t work at the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 point. The operating temperature is low enough that they have to worry about light from the Earth and Moon as well as the Sun. From the Lagrange points, the Earth and Moon are 60 deg. apart, which is pushing it, and once a month, the Earth and Sun are 180 deg. apart. There is no direction you could point the “Sun” shade which would block all three, all the time.
Working with Cassini, we had similar issues, although not as extreme, and I saw some really convoluted pointing profiles to solve them (and some of them were my invention, I’m sorry to say.) I can’t see a solution for JWST other than the planned Earth-Sun L2 orbit. Or a operating at a much greater distance from the Earth, but that doesn’t solve anything related to deployment/commissioning and makes telemetry worse.
Now that I think about it, an Earth-Moon L4 or L5 orbit would probably give a large thermal cycle once every month. IR instruments aren’t designed for that, and I’m not sure how many cycles they’d even survive.
You are not think about the logical progression of planning to placed a large space telescope at either L4 or L5. If you can get a large space telescope to those locations. Then it wouldn’t a large stretch of imagination to use a large separate space dock like sunscreen with radiators to shield the telescopes from thermal variations. Something like a cube like structure with one face missing. Of course that requires cheap transportation to L4 and L5.
Actually, getting something like JWST to the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 isn’t significantly worse than getting it to the Sun-Earth L2 point. Stopping at L4 or L5 and then going on to the Sun-Earth L2 point would take a different propulsion system, but to sort of electric propulsion used by communications satellites probably do.
But those are minor things. I didn’t say you couldn’t build a IR telescope which would work from the L4 or L5 point. I said JWST wouldn’t work there. Not without changes so major they would practically be starting over from scratch.
(By the way, the box idea doesn’t quite work; the cold side, with the telescope and instruments, needs to radiate into a hemisphere worth of cold, empty sky.)
To clarified telescope is not part of the sunshade. It is free floating inside.
Didn’t say anything about the JWST at L4 or L5. But I don’t see it workable at either locations as currently configured.
I’m sure it would “work”, it just would not work fully up to spec. But I think there would be enough great results accessible to keep us busy for two or three years.
But notice also that, if some of the instruments seem like they have become somewhat obsolescent, we could probably replace or upgrade them to current state-of-the-art. Remember, these things were spec’d and designed back in the 1990’s. All those years of delays likely offer some opportunities to upgrade, as was the case for HST, if only we don’t have to send crews out a million miles from Earth, on an errand that would take 2+ months just for round-trip travel time.
HST was built for servicing. The instruments are easily accessible from outside the spacecraft and in modular units designed for removal. JWST’s instruments are deep inside and you’d practically have to disassemble the whole thing to get at them. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, but we’ve got an as-built observatory.
As far as “working” at high temperatures, we’re talking about IR instruments. If the mirror (or any other part of the optics) is warm, they see the IR emissions from that. It spamps the signal from the faint sources it’s trying to observe. It might even be enough to damage the detectors. And hot-cold thermal cycling could also damage them.
I’m not suggesting LEAVING there at L4 or L5; I just think we should consider getting it fully deployed, functionally checked out as much as possible before going to Sun-Earth L2, with a few of the easier scientific results (cherries on top of the Sunday) collected to satisfy ourselves that there’s not going to be some catastrophic discovery when it is almost unreachable, a million miles away.
Then if all is well, we send a high-powered tug (? possibly ion-electric ?) up to dock and push it out to S-E L2, with some confidence we can leave it out there for 10+ years. (If not, send a crew up to L4 or L5 to fix it [likely easier, or less impossible, than trying to send a crew to L2]. If necessary, even bring it back down to LEO for major rework.) The point is to have some possible fall-back to avoid a catastrophic unfixable failure. We **must recognize** that such disasters are always possible, as we discovered in 1990 with HST.
Let me try again. If I understand the pointing requirements correctly, JWST can not operate unless the Sun shade if pointed at the Sun, Earth _and_ the Moon, give or take 20 or 30 degrees or so. This is not possible in an Earth-Moon L4 or L5 orbit for more than a few days per month. And, for the rest of the month, the instruments would be heated to off-spec temperatures. Putting IR instruments of that sort through cold-hot-cold-hot-etc. cycles is a known way of damaging them. Possibly destroying them.
In addition, we have no ability to send a crew to L4 or L5, nor do we have a solar electric tug. The closest we have is the electric propulsion systems communications satellites use to get from a geostationary transfer orbit to a geostationary orbit. So anything along the lines your suggest would add years of delay and, being hugely optimistic, hunderds of millions of dollars.
In terms of how JWST could or should have been designed, you might have a point. But for JWST as it exists and was built, this isn’t viable. We’re over a decade past the point where that can be changed. And, back then, on-orbit servicing was considered and ruled out because even the possibility of being able to do seemed impossible before the planned end of mission. (Even with all the delays, that’s less impossible but still unlikely.)
Excellent points; I agree the Earth-Sun L2 makes sense for a telescope with cryogenic sensotrs, and human servicing at that location is not feasible, indeed human servicing of Hubble in LEO was barely feasible. Robotic servicing would have required a different design. But without servicing there has to be a plan to replace the spacecraft if it fails. Because of the expense, no such plan exists.
Launching more missions with shorter development timelines and smaller technological leaps between generations of spacecraft would cost less in the long run and generate more scientific observations, while maintaining a cadre of engineers and technicians with cointemporary experience and reducing program disruption if one spacecraft fails.
Here’s an interesting quote below from a 2011 article:
“The JWST program was restructured in 2011 in response to repeated cost overruns and schedule delays. The new plan included healthy built-in budget and schedule reserves to deal with any unexpected problems that might arise. The point of having reserves is that in any advanced technology program like JWST, “unknown unknowns” will be encountered that affect cost and schedule. If planning is done effectively, by the time of launch, all the reserves will be exhausted. The key is not to exceed the reserves and create new overruns or delays.”
https://spacepolicyonline.c…
I guess we’ll soon see if JWTS is too big to fail or does congress cut its losses by canceling the program. Just last year Lightfoot stated to the press all was good for a 2019 launch date as planned and budgeted. Only a few months ago it was 2020 launch.
One part of that quote is worth repeating: “If planning is done effectively, by the time of launch, all the reserves will be exhausted.”
This is why NASA projects are often over budget but almost never under budget. If a manager’s job is to spend the reserves down to zero (as the quote indicates), he can always find a way to do so. Well, I suppose an amazingly unimaginative one might have trouble, but it isn’t hard to find some extra task or something on someone’s “wouldn’t it be nice if we could…” list. But if something really unexpected happens, the project ends up over budget.
If it were not for this philosophy, frequent cost overruns wouldn’t be so bad (within reason…) Hold 30% in reserve for unexpected problems. Sometimes more of them come up than expected, and you end up spending 40% more than the original estimate. Sometimes fewer problems come up, and you’re only 20% over the original estimate. That would average out to the budgeted estimate plus 30%, and no one would have to go hat-in-hand back to Congress. But when you’re expected to spend all the reserves, things don’t average out.
By the way, the justification for this, as I’ve heard it, is that it helps solve problems early. A manager should spend some reserves early in development, to resolve minor problems before they have a chance to become major. (E.g. the new version of a certain part I could name turned out to be an unreliable piece of junk. It would have been a good idea to spend extra money to test and prove that it was, before a whole lot of circuits using it had been designed.) To discourage managers from being too stingy, the practice is to expect them to smoothly spend reserves down to zero. In a way, I worry that this is substituting a rule for good judgement. Maybe it’s unreasonable, but that seems to avoid bad management at the expense of precluding excellent management.
Management reserves are understandable. But in 2011 JWST put in “healthy built in reserves, “The new plan included healthy built-in budget and schedule reserves to deal with any unexpected problems that might arise”. Lightfoot said they only needed 1 yr delay- now it’s much more than that. Do they really know where they are at. If they are really only a shot time away from launching they should have a handle on how much they need to complete it.
Normal reserves are around 30% as you indicate. Wonder what JWST “healthy built in reserve “ rates were. Wonder- Did JWST spend them on the real problems or did they spend them on what was expedient to zero budget?
Something isn’t adding up. Did nasa say they only need a year because that’s all they thought they could get- figuring they will keep getting another year. If they were really nearing being ready I would have expected to hear something like “JWST needs $xx with 25-30% reserves and we will be able to launch no later than x years +- 6 months”. We’re not hearing that kind of talk.
The extra year of delay was recommended by an independent review panel, not by the project. I suspect it’s real, and not just the project asking for an annual, one-year extensions.
As far as spending reserves down to zero is concerned, I’m not a fan of that. But JWST’s overspending since the 2011 cost cap is 11%. Presumably that $8.7 billion cost cap included the healthy reserves you mentioned. So they’ve probably blown past zero reserve.
I know how the “review panels” are picked. They’re corrupt buddies in within the space industry concluding what NASA wants them to say. I also know first hand what goes on in mettings discussing only fess up to 1-2 year delay trick to avoid program cancellation.
First envisioned in 1996, JWST was originally expected to cost between $1 billion and $3.5 billion, with a launch date scheduled for sometime between 2007 and 2011
But the cost of the project grew throughout the early 2000s, soaring above $4.5 billion, as the telescope’s launch was consistently postponed. Here’s where they did the 1 yr 2 yr slip that satellite programs do to avoid being cancelled.
Then in 2011, the JWST program went through an extensive replan: a new launch date was set for 2018, and Congress capped the cost of the telescope’s development at $8 billion. After that, NASA said JWST would ultimately cost $8.8 billion, with an extra $837 million needed to operate the telescope once it was in space.
Last September JWST announced a 1 yr slip to 2019
Then the GAO report noted problems with the telescope so the slip became 2020.
Now there another slip to 2021 due to screws and parts coming lose in the sun shield.
Now it’s announced that With further delays, Webb telescope at risk of seeing its rocket retired” We will have the Ariane 5 for at least until the end of 2022. NASA has not initiated any discussions with ESA or the Ariane Group about flying on an Ariane 6,” NASA’s Felicia Chou told Ars. “We still plan to launch Webb on the Ariane 5.” The Ariane might delay a little longer but not much beyond 2023 due to the Ariane 6 requiring a new launch pad.
These repetitive 1 -2 year slips that have been going on since 2007 take their toll and are the game satellite programs play. It causes the programs to take short cuts and not fix things properly all because they won’t fess up to needing more time in fear the program gets cancelled. The GAO report fears there are more problems than what JWST has stated- and 2 billion more beyond the 8 billion. That a big increase over the $4.5 billion originally planned.
I guess all I can say is that I know the whole, sorry history of JWST’s delays and cost overruns. And your doubts about review boards are, in some (most?) cases reasonable. But I do know one person on the latest JWST external review board, at least slightly, and I’ve seen him at work on other project review boards. Not all the members are picked to assure the management-desired results.
Hope the JWTS overcomes it’s problems and is successful. It will be so exciting to see it finally launch. My group I was a project officer for way back in the 1980s delivered all those 6 deformable mirrors used in star fire, chicago U et al. I know how we all worked. Lots of people have worked incredibly hard for a long time on JWST. We had some very painful preliminary and critical design reviews. But the criticism was very constructive – lots of great advice and help by the optics community.
I also hope NASA understands the importance of a review board. They can be very helpful getting a program back on track.
Gaming the review board to get funding year by year without taking the time to take a hard look and think things thru. The year to year slips just to survive ultimately do in many satellite programs as well as huge cost/schedule overruns ultimately jeopardizing the program even more.
But unless there is some specific change the review board can make, it can’t affect the actual cost and schedule. In this case the only choices seem to be continue to spend the money or cancel. If there is the prospect of still more delays, cancellation might be the best alternative. Or NASA could add a penalty fee of $100,000/day for and slips.
Of course EVERYONE truly wants the project to succeed. So everyone is caught in a vise, between that general good hope, and their own personal situation, being squeezed by their own superiors, their own personal perception of reality (How much will it truly cost to complete, how much are the funders really willing to agree to before they cancel everything, etc, etc.) Are we all being honest about what it is likely to cost to finish the job decently? It is just terribly difficult, and our information is always incomplete — sometimes honestly, sometimes not.
We need game theory experts to help us break out of this slough without going under — glub, glub – forever. Nate Silver, save us!!
Nate Silver lost all credibility after the last election. He clung to the notion that Trump was going to lose until nearly midnight when it was apparent to everyone else that all hope was lost much earlier in the evening. His prediction for the outcome was profoundly wrong.
Listening to the hearings today. Mr. Thomas Young was right as I pointed out that the over runs in JWST and other aerospace programs are due to the practice of “lowest credible bids”. As Mr. Young goes on at the hearing to point out these bid are unrealistically low and meant to win without the good faith ability to meet the cost and schedule propose. This wreaks havoc not only on the program engineers trying to work with an unrealistic expectations but on other nasa programs. For example Wfirst was anticipated to already have JWST competed- so now there are discussions on what to do with their budget and plans. Many programs will be affected by the JWST overruns.
Keith is right on target regarding the NG statements being tone deaf. They also indicate they’re still having technical issues. If was refreshing to hear Mr. Young state the issues at this time are due to technical issues the aerospace should know how to handle- not technologies yet to be developed. That is what would be expected at a point in time of a project a couple years from launch. So Mr. Willoughbys statements about how hard this is is the reason for the overruns is very disturbing. Look forward to the hearings tomorrow.
The tax payers derserve better than this. The Aeropace industry has been engaging in the duplicitous lowest credible bidding practice for decades. This practice of lowest credible bidding is not the same thing as optimistic bidding- it is a fake bid under the guise of lowest credibility (or optimism or high risk bidding) that the aerospace business know is nowhere near enough to do the job. I hope NASA management listens to their engineers and scientist critiques in proposal evaluations rather than brow beat them into playing this duplicitous game and picking the lowerst credible bid.
There’s a simple solution. Firm fixed price.
In the hearing Thomas Young quickly maneuvered in to declare firm fixed price was not the way to go and the congressional committee agreed-essentially taking that option off the table for NASA flagship missions. Hard to fix problems when the right tools needed are taken away.
Not accounting for testing of parts in the primary budget, instead pushing it into the reserve, strikes me as a good example of terrible management.
Testing was in the budget, but not an excessive amount. The part in question was supposed to be a drop in, functional identical new version of one people had been using for a couple of decades. And the normally-reliable manufacturer swore up and down that the new version would be every bit as good. The normal level of testing, which was budgeted for, showed a problem. That’s when reserves were needed. That involved extra testing to see how bad it was, if it could be solved by screening, or if a new circuit design was required. At that point, the sooner you find a solution, the less of a problem (and a budget drain) it’s going to be.
I’m not defending the management of the James Webb telescope program, but when I hear about things like this, the absurdity of a group of people who pass bills that blow the national budget to pieces criticizing the financial management of another group of people comes to mind (I’m generally referring to Republicans who, astoundingly, call themselves budget hawks).
“Deficits don’t matter” Republican Vice President.
I agree.. reagan tripled the national debt and bush doubled it.. and STILL republicans are the budget saviors.. and with trump’s tax give away the budget is back to the trillion dollar mark and the republicans are to blame.. AGAIN .. AS ALWAYS.
Some Republicans are fiscally conservative. That’s why, despite a majority in both houses, neither the budget nor the tax reform bill were instantly passed. Other Republicans are more anti-tax or pro-defense. But it’s not like the Democrats are a marvel of consistency either (e.g. the tension between freedom of speech and opposition to hate speech.)
True but democrats do not pretend to be budget hawks. They are open about raising taxes on the top 10% and cutting military spending. Republicans that voted for tax cuts when every economist on the planet is saying it will create budget deficits and raise the national they say it won’t .. they lied.. they knew they lied and the only time they were budget hawks was when Obama was president and they tried to burn down the economy..
I’ve got to disagree with that. Many (most) Republicans in Congress did vote in the way you describe. But a sizeable number did not, and were following their stated position on fiscal conservativism. I’m just objecting to describing the Republican party as a monolithic block on this issue. They aren’t.
At least most bloggers on Nasawatch still utilize critical thinking and try to show some measure of objectivity even if we differ in viewpoint. With our country as polarized as it is, there is no space for discussion and no inclination for critical thinking.
That point is true, Dr. W., and much appreciated, at least by this commenter. I peruse this site because:
* I am interested in space
* Keith and Mark flag events/topics that matter
* The really smart people here tolerate the presence of interested and motivated citizens who are poorly educated in the technical and policy subjects.
That’s not enough, though, at least on my part:
* commenters of every persuasion, as they say, disagree with out being disagreeable.
* The absence of n00bery, due almost entirely to vigilance on the part of the editors (thank you, Keith, and Mark).
Having run a blog years ago, one with much less interest and far lower success, I can attest to the personal time required to keep comments in line.
It can be nothing other than a labor of love for which we are all beneficiaries.
The delays have nothing whatsoever to do with fiscal conservatism and everything to do with moving a piece of the pie from State A to State B.
Overheard in the cloak room:
Hey! I will have you know that thing, sir – nothing! – will stand between me and the defense of this great country!
Am I making myself clear??!!
More like:
“Hey! I will have you know that thing, sir – nothing! – will stand between me and the reduction of taxes for the top 1% of the country!”
“Am I making myself clear??!!”
And atmosphere turbulence compensation has caught up to HST. Take a look at the VLT images. When the 30m telescopes come on line they will be better than HST. May not surpass Webb or a 8M proposed space telescope. IR may not be as good either.
Ground-based observations in the IR are limited. The atmosphere is more-or-less opaque across half the wavelengths JWST will observe. There are plenty of windows, but I don’t think you can do most of the science they’re trying for with that limitation. Towards the long-wavelength end of JWST’s range, there’s also quite a bit of thermal emission from the atmosphere.
Not that I’m complaining about the VLT (except for an unimaginative name…) I’ve seen some real good results in the near IR, of H3+ aurora at Jupiter and Saturn. And that’s without the adaptive optics. For the wavelengths you can observe from the ground, I think space telescopes are being eclipsed by ground based adaptive optics. But you still need space telescopes for all the other wavelengths of interest.
The thing that has always worried me about JWST is the fear that something, anything, *sticks* while several billion bucks worth of origami unfolds in deep space. Never mind the sunk cost, the effect on future project funding would be catastrophic.
With launch vehicles getting bigger, it’s not clear a folding mirror is needed after all.
Astronomers will always want a larger mirror. Also, the trend towards segmented mirrors on the ground isn’t all about adaptive optics. Making a monolithic, 6.5 meter mirror is much harder than making 18, 1.32 meter mirrors. But a larger launch vehicle could reduce the number of folds.
The BFR will (presumably) have a 9 meter fairing and with the expense of large telescopes I think the largest LV would be affordable. I agree a segmented mirror may be desirable, but not necessarily a deployable one. However whatever design is chosen, maybe there should be a different compromise between capability and schedule risk, and a shorter development timeline. A bird in orbit is worth two on the ground.
We might also consider that if active cooling is needed, a large LV would leave a lot of mass capacity for solar cells and cooling systems.
A slight nit-pick. The internal diameter of the cargo bay in “Doctor Evil” (clamshell hatch cargo) version of the BFS is 8 meters. There is no fairings with any versions of the BFS.
A bit late for Webb, but yes…